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Music

What Your Shitty Taste in Music Says About You

God forgive the rap blog commenters, bros in neon tank tops at raves, and people who still think music with guitars is better than everything else.

Noisey has offices in both the United States and the United Kingdom. In the storied tradition of American imperialist hegemony, we have taken it upon ourselves to take versions of things people in the UK did and improve them in a way that suits our self-aggrandizing and more efficiently evil capitalist desires. Which is why we’re rewriting this.

To say that judging people based on their music tastes has become more difficult might be true, but it’s certainly not “really difficult,” nor impossible. The wonderful thing about living in a time where democratized access to information is exponentially increasing is that it enhances our ability to draw conclusions about everyone’s terrible taste with nuance! Now you can paint an Impressionist paintings’ worth of judgemental hatred—a collection of microagressive signifiers of resentment that coalesce into one portrait of spite that really reveals just how insecure you are. As you read this, do so with the knowledge that we realize writing this probably makes us even worse people than you.

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RAP BLOG COMMENT SECTION PEOPLE

The vast majority of your precious time on this earth has been wasted, arguing with other sentient backpacks about whether or not Nas or Jay-Z is better. This is the rap nerd equivalent of bickering about whether Times New Roman or Arial is better. Big Ghost has probably told you to get the fuck out of his mentions multiple times. Stop "saluting" your idols on Twitter. What do you think will happen if you actually determine who was the G.O.A.T.? Would the universe collapse upon itself? Would you immediately have to start caring about, like, golf? You are chasing a unicorn which can never be touched, because once you lay so much as a digit upon its hide, it will immediately impale you with the razor-sharp spike sticking out of its face.

BEDROOM PRODUCER DUDES

Spend all your time on Soundcloud/Bandcamp and find that one dude from Dubuque, Iowa who is chopping a pitched-up Curtis Mayfield sample for the nineteenth time, maybe you two can collaborate on a track with the Akai MPC controller you just bought from the clearance section of TurntableLab. With luck you’ll get picked up by a Bandcamp record label and your song will be featured on a Bandcamp singles compilation that five people will listen to, or a Bandcamp rapper might hop on the “Bandcamp All-Stars” remix of your shitty Bandcamp song you posted on Bandcamp. Bandcamp.

INSTAGRAM FOLK PEOPLE WITHOUT SOULS

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Bask in your humble Midwestern upbringing and the music that glorifies it. Keep a copy of For Emma, Forever Ago inside of a hollowed-out Bible. Arrange all of your supplies for a day trip in the woods in a neat, organized fashion so you can post a photo of it to Instagram (we recommend the Rinse filter, Nashville if you’re feeling saucy). Tattoo “folk” on the inside of your eyelids. Eat a banjo. Build a treehouse inside of your best friend’s beard and then write a Thought Catalog article about it. Post it on your gluten-free Facebook. Revel in the seven “Likes” you receive, because your self-worth hinges upon an online economy of attention.

PEOPLE WHO STILL THINK MUSIC WITH GUITARS IS BETTER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE

Everything about oral sex is terrifying to you, because putting your mouth in the vicinity of another person’s genitals would mean using it for something other than singing along to Sigur Ros. You’ve never danced to a band that wasn’t Talking Heads or The Smiths. The irony of David Byrne cashing in on non-Western musical traditions for record sales is completely lost on you. You’ve used the phrase “world music” without feeling any guilt.

WIZ KHALIFA ACOLYTES/WHITE KIDS WHO ONLY WEAR MISHKA

In college, you made your own remix of “Black and Yellow.” It’s the greatest miracle of your life that no one’s found it, or any of your other sphincter-clenchingly cumbersome freestyles. You've also realized that watching the "Bugatti" video once daily will cause less psychic pain than going to therapy with your parents would. You can tell what strain of weed it is with a 95% degree of accuracy just by hearing someone crumble it up, yet you’ve never been to a rap concert because you’re afraid you might get shot. You’re the type of person who says you’re from the city when you’re really from the suburbs. Stop ending your tweets with the word “bruh,” because everyone is laughing at you.

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POP-PUNK APOLOGISTS

Yes, listening to Blink 182 now makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but just that’s just because you still go to your childhood pediatrician when your parents fly you home for Thanksgiving. There is no emo revival, Taking Back Sunday is not about to be “critically reconsidered,” and Thursday broke up because the scene is a stupid way to live. Go to Riot Fest, weep softly for your lost youth, and for the love of Christ make your Spotify private so your friends don’t have to be burdened by the knowledge that you’re still listening to Fall Out Boy.

RAP NEWS RATS

You wake up bright and early at 12:30pm in your mom’s basement, put on your freshest pair of cargo shorts, and seize the day by immediately getting on your laptop so you can download the 12 most recent mp3s posted on allhiphop.com, hiphopearly.com, or any of the countless shithole rap blogs that all produce identical content. Now you’ve got that exclusive Raekwon freestyle over “Royals” that no one else is talking about! Add it to that playlist of “Royals” freestyles in your iTunes, right below your playlist of “Control” freestyles, which is above your playlist of “Otis” freestyles. Then text your only two friends to discuss it. Discuss who’s “killed” the beat best. You write Papoose fan fiction. Consider showering. Don’t ask yourself what you are doing with your life, because that would take you to a very dark place.

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MEN IN THEIR MID-30S WHO ARE STILL RABIDLY ARGUING ABOUT STRAIGHT EDGE HARDCORE

You refuse to accept that you killed punk dead, which is why every invitation you’ve received to a party in the last decade has been accidental.

COLLEGE RADIO PEOPLE

You have accomplished the Herculean task of listening to everything, while managing to know about nothing. You smell like the shitty noise venue is in your college town, read Wittgenstein as you listen to drone records, buy vintage screw tapes off of Ebay despite not knowing who Z-Ro is, and god forbid if any of Fela Kuti’s progeny happen to be playing within a hundred-mile radius, because you will send a gushing email to your college radio station listserv offering rides to people. You are probably a Marxist, but this too is an affectation. Life is meaningless, so just get it over with and go into accounting just like your parents did.

NEON TANK TOP EDM BROS

You’re like a meth addict, except your wraith-like existence is contingent upon attending overpriced clubs and festivals to see Sebastian Ingrosso or one of his infinite derivatives twiddle knobs and wobble basslines as if he were DJ Daddy Warbucks, dropping bass from a gigantic bag to a bunch of greedy, undeserving orphans with hunger in their mouths and real trap shit in their hearts. What you may not realize is that your life has become one perpetual case of the Tuesday Blues because your serotonin levels are constantly depleted from doing too much ecstasy and now your existence is a living nightmare soundtracked by dubstep.

THE NOISEY WRITERS WHO WROTE THIS

Self-explanatory. See also, Facebook comments on Noisey articles.

Are you a glutton for punishment? Here, read about what your regrettable scene tattoo says about you.